A Plaque for First U.S. Ambassador
by Simone Kozhuharov
The Moscow Times
A man laying flowers Thursday on the plaque to Adams near St. Isaac's Square.
ST. PETERSBURG -- Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams joined a select group of foreigners to be honored with a memorial in Russia when U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow unveiled a plaque to him in St. Petersburg on Thursday.
Adams was the United States' first accredited ambassador to Russia, from 1809 to 1814, at the imperial court of Tsar Alexander I.
Vershbow said the plaque was "a way of reminding people of the long history" of U.S.-Russia relations and "honoring our first diplomat here."
Unveiled near St. Isaac's Square, the brown granite plaque was sponsored by Alfa Bank and created by local artist Alexander Pozin.
Adams, the sixth U.S. president and the first president whose father had also been president, became good friends with the tsar during his posting, said Yelena Andryushenkova, a researcher at the U.S. Consulate.
"'From the first meeting, we became friends,'" Andryushenkova quoted Adams as writing in his diary.
Adams "would take walks along the Neva with Alexander I, and they talked about all sorts of things, ranging from politics to granite," said consulate spokesman David Siefkin.
"Alexander was interested in the United States. He had received copies of the Declaration of Independence and other documents from Thomas Jefferson and was very interested in how the American republic differed from the Russian experience," Siefkin said. "They hit it off quite well."
Adams first came to Russia at the age of 14, working for two years in St. Petersburg as a secretary and English-to-French translator for a foreign diplomat. When Adams became president, he lobbied Congress to build an astronomical observatory modeled on Russia's Pulkovo observatory. Congress rejected the proposal as too expensive.
Adams also worked with Noah Webster, compiler of the widely used Webster's dictionary, gathering linguistic information about the Russian language. His research helped prove the link between Russian and other European languages.
by Simone Kozhuharov
The Moscow Times
A man laying flowers Thursday on the plaque to Adams near St. Isaac's Square.
ST. PETERSBURG -- Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams joined a select group of foreigners to be honored with a memorial in Russia when U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow unveiled a plaque to him in St. Petersburg on Thursday.
Adams was the United States' first accredited ambassador to Russia, from 1809 to 1814, at the imperial court of Tsar Alexander I.
Vershbow said the plaque was "a way of reminding people of the long history" of U.S.-Russia relations and "honoring our first diplomat here."
Unveiled near St. Isaac's Square, the brown granite plaque was sponsored by Alfa Bank and created by local artist Alexander Pozin.
Adams, the sixth U.S. president and the first president whose father had also been president, became good friends with the tsar during his posting, said Yelena Andryushenkova, a researcher at the U.S. Consulate.
"'From the first meeting, we became friends,'" Andryushenkova quoted Adams as writing in his diary.
Adams "would take walks along the Neva with Alexander I, and they talked about all sorts of things, ranging from politics to granite," said consulate spokesman David Siefkin.
"Alexander was interested in the United States. He had received copies of the Declaration of Independence and other documents from Thomas Jefferson and was very interested in how the American republic differed from the Russian experience," Siefkin said. "They hit it off quite well."
Adams first came to Russia at the age of 14, working for two years in St. Petersburg as a secretary and English-to-French translator for a foreign diplomat. When Adams became president, he lobbied Congress to build an astronomical observatory modeled on Russia's Pulkovo observatory. Congress rejected the proposal as too expensive.
Adams also worked with Noah Webster, compiler of the widely used Webster's dictionary, gathering linguistic information about the Russian language. His research helped prove the link between Russian and other European languages.
